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The Iowa Caucuses Are a Week Away — Here's What You Should Know

The Iowa caucuses won't predict the rest of the primary race, but they mark the time when endless speculation by pollsters and pundits becomes a lot less speculative and the state-by-state strategies of different candidates come into sharper focus.
Foto di Tiffany Von Arnim/Flickr

After months of campaign rallies, debates, and increasingly confident tweets from Donald Trump, the first voting of the 2016 US presidential primaries is finally just a week away.

The Iowa caucuses will take place next Monday. The electoral event is pretty much a combination of prom night and Christmas morning for political pundits and campaign staffers in terms of the level of excitement. The enormous anticipation is due to the fact that the state's caucuses inaugurate the official primary season, not because they have historically been an accurate predictor for the rest of the race. After all, Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum won the Republican Iowa caucuses respectively in 2008 and 2012 before eventually dropping their campaigns for president.

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Nevertheless, Iowa matters because it is finally when the past six months of endless speculation by pollsters and pundits becomes a lot less speculative, and the state-by-state strategies of the different candidates come into sharper focus. For those who have been heroically trying to avoid the contest for president, the Iowa caucuses signal that it's time to start paying attention.

First comes the Republican race, which has narrowed to essentially a two-person contest in Iowa between Donald Trump and Texas Senator Ted Cruz, who are still polling neck and neck. Trump has said that he is intent on winning Iowa, and he has been campaigning hard in the state to prove it. The businessman turned reality TV star even spent a rare overnight stay at the Holiday Inn Express in Sioux City this weekend and attended church the following Sunday, in his latest attempt to win over Iowa's conservative Christian voters, who have rallied behind Cruz.

Cruz, meanwhile, is busy on a whirlwind "Cruzin' to Caucus" bus tour of the state, accompanied by an army of volunteers and an impressive ground operation that is working to knock Trump out of first place. Cruz is expected to do well in Iowa, where the evangelical and socially conservative voters make up much of the Republican base and have historically determined the caucus winner.

The Republican Party establishment has become increasingly divided over which of the two candidates to support. Several figures have reluctantly gotten behind Trump in recent days, which really says more about the horror they see in a Cruz victory and what it would mean for the long-term success of the party, rather than a widespread enthusiasm for the Donald.

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On Saturday, Iowa's longtime Republican Senator Chuck Grassley joined Trump at a rally to offer his support, followed by an appearance at another Trump event the next day by Jeff Kaufmann, Iowa's GOP chairman. Both men stressed that their appearances should not be interpreted as a formal endorsement for Trump, but it was still widely seen as an expression of the establishment's lukewarm preference for him rather than Cruz.

"If Cruz loses Iowa, Trump wins convincingly, I think all he will need at that point is to have a single current establishment figure, meaning a sitting governor or a sitting senator endorse him," conservative commentator Charles Krauthammer remarked last week on Fox News. "If you get somebody today from the so-called establishment who endorses him, I think it becomes a flood. At that point the dam breaks and you will get a rush of other establishment figures who will rally around him."

Related: Ted Cruz's Biggest Challenge: To Know Him Is to Hate Him

Cruz remains deeply unpopular among Iowa's elected officials for his opposition to ethanol subsidies, and he is pretty much despised by the Republican establishment in general. Last week, Iowa's Republican Governor Terry Branstad proudly said that he was rooting for Cruz's defeat. Even so, Cruz managed to pick up an endorsement from former Texas Governor Rick Perry last night. Perry and Iowa Republican Congressman Steve King plan to campaign for Cruz in the state this week.

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Other notable Republican voices have decided at the last minute to throw their support behind Florida Senator Marco Rubio, even though he's polling a distant third in Iowa. The state's leading paper, the Des Moines Register, endorsed Rubio (as well as Hillary Clinton) over the weekend. Republican Iowa Senator Joni Ernst plans to attend a Rubio campaign event today, saying in a statement that "Marco is not only a strong conservative and a good friend, but someone that I trust to secure our country."

Then there is the Democratic race. Although the field is considerably less crowded than the Republicans, the two frontrunners are locked in a virtual dead heat, with Bernie Sanders having steadily erased Clinton's lead in Iowa over recent weeks. Martin O'Malley, the former Maryland governor, is also technically still in the running, but you can be forgiven if you still don't know who he is, since he has consistently polled support in the single digits.

Both Clinton and Sanders's campaigns have called in reinforcements in a last-ditch effort to pull ahead this final week. Rapper Killer Mike and Vermont ice cream kings Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield of Ben & Jerry's fame will be campaigning for Sanders in Iowa in the coming days. Clinton, on the other hand, has considerably more backing from establishment politicians, including New Jersey Senator Cory Booker and Julian Castro, the US Secretary Secretary of Housing and Urban Development and a rising star in the Democratic Party, who both campaigned for her in Iowa over the weekend.

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The biggest establishment figure to throw weight behind Clinton is President Barack Obama, who lavished praise on the leading Democratic candidate in an interview with Politico that was published on Monday. Though Obama has made of point of remaining neutral in the race between Clinton and Sanders, Obama made it clear that he felt Clinton was the better pragmatic choice between the two.

"[The] one thing everybody understands is that this job right here, you don't have the luxury of just focusing on one thing," Obama remarked. "Bernie came in with the luxury of being a complete long shot and just letting loose. I think Hillary came in with the both privilege — and burden — of being perceived as the front-runner.… You're always looking at the bright, shiny object that people haven't seen before — that's a disadvantage to her."

The Democratic candidates will meet for a town hall discussion in Iowa tonight, while the Republicans will hold a debate in the state this Thursday. The two events present the last big opportunity for the candidates to make their case to the public before Iowa voters pledge their support next week.

As soon as the Iowa caucuses are over on Monday night, the world will turn its attention to the looming New Hampshire primary on Tuesday, February 9. Then come the Nevada caucuses and the South Carolina primary later in February. It won't be until after "Super Tuesday" on March 1, the day when the largest swath of states hold their primary voting, that we're likely to have a clear idea of who the nominees for each party will be.

Even though Iowa is not necessarily the best predictor of the eventual party nominees, its coveted first-place status means that "everyone likes to use it make their prognostications," according to Nick Kachiroubas, a professor of political history and elections at DePaul University. "Because somebody did do well or didn't do well in Iowa, this means X, Y, or Z."

In other words, the race for president may be many months along, but Monday is just the beginning.

Follow Olivia Becker on Twitter: @obecker928